


take another breath

by Blue_Rive



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Roommates, Song references, Timeskip, but it's a gen fic, disclaimer i know nothing about college, just cause i like bastille, no beta we die like men, or england, warlock kind of has a crush on adam, warlock voice: the only straight i am is a straight up bitch, warlock's american that's how i'm justifying it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-05
Updated: 2019-07-05
Packaged: 2020-06-09 17:35:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19480735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blue_Rive/pseuds/Blue_Rive
Summary: It made sense, really, that his roommate would be that odd. Weird things just... happened around him. He’d been kidnapped, had a satanist nanny, a gun had turned into a water pistol in his hands, and that wasn’t even accounting for that disaster with the crocodile when he was twelve and the mysterious cheque from an unknown person he’d got every year since his mess of a birthday party signed ‘from your guardian angel and demon’.He picked up his iPod and fiddled with it. The screen flickered to life.I said heyyou can’t write itthe most peculiar day of your lifeNo kidding.***Warlock meets Adam Young in college.





	take another breath

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this while also trying to do nano so now i am officially dead

It was bad enough Warlock was going to have to study business or law in uni. It was bad enough that he’d wound up across the world, back in England, in some place that would be expensive to most people but was a dead-end college in the middle of nowhere for him. So why did he have to have a roommate, and why did it have to be some nobody from a tiny village instead of one of his friends? Well, he knew the answer- none of them would be caught dead going there. 

* * *

But his dad had always been old-fashioned. Warlock had been born in a convent and had a fucking _nanny,_ for god’s sake. And now, adding to the unfortunate pile of _stuff,_ he was going to this university. 

He knew he was being overdramatic, and he wasn’t going to stop anytime soon, if he could help it. He’d complained about it to anyone who would listen- pretty few people could be bothered to (as usual), so he was compensating by griping about it endlessly to himself, driving down a highway in a way that might have been reckless if the bar wasn’t ‘driving through the M25 while it was ablaze in hellfire’. 

Warlock Dowling was nineteen years old, started a goth phase when he was twelve, and hadn’t emerged from it yet. He’d grown his hair out long, dyed it, found a black leather jacket, and tried his hardest to appear as non-cishet as possible. It was a pretty good aesthetic, actually. 

_You’re putting up your armor when you leave..._

_You leave because you’re certain of who you want to be_

_Icarus is flying too close to the sun_

_And Icarus’ life-_

Warlock muted the Bastill _e_ blaring from the speakers and clambered out of his car, taking in the entrance to the college. Perhaps it wouldn’t be as bad as he was making it out in his head.

_It has only just begun, it’s just begun_

\------

There were altogether too many people in Warlock’s room. He counted four- a dark-haired boy making a mess of some boxes, a tall, thin boy with glasses doing his homework, (classes hadn’t even _started_ yet), a curly-haired girl sprawled across one of the beds, playing with a pocketknife, and finally, a striking blue-eyed boy sitting on top of some other boxes and glaring intensely at paperwork. 

They were all engaged in conversation, which Warlock could hear as he came closer. 

“I’m trying to make it out so I can room with you guys,” the last was saying, waving his papers around, “but it’s not _working.”  
_

“Actually, can you still do that?” the boy with glasses asked. “Just mess with reality and such?” 

The girl flipped open the scissor part in her pocketknife, pushing herself up into a seated position. “I think he can? Are you sure it’s him-”

The conversation cut off when they noticed Warlock standing awkwardly in the doorway. 

“Hi,” he said, voice suddenly loud in the quiet. “Which one of you is Adam Young?” He glared at them. “You know, the guy I’m _supposed_ to be rooming with?”

The blue-eyed boy- Adam- raised his hand.

“That’s me. They’re-”

“Them,” 

“Wensleydale- that’s me- Pepper, and Brian. He’s not _from_ Tadfield. And we’re not kids anymore. We’re much more responsible.”

Pepper scoffed. 

Warlock awkwardly edged around them and dropped his bag on the bed that was not currently being occupied by an eighteen-year-old with a knife.

“I’m taking this side.” 

Adam flashed him a thumbs-up, and Warlock immediately dumped the contents of his bag on the ground. He was not cleaning like a housemaid on the first day of college. Dusting off his hands, he kicked an iPod out of the walkway and called it good. 

He noticed Adam watching him with an expression of horror on his face.

“And I thought rooming with Brian was bad,” Wensleydale commented. 

Warlock waved his hand dismissively. “I’ll shove it under the bed later. I’m Warlock Dowling, by the way, but you probably know that.”

“Yeah.”

They stood there in silence.

“This is almost as awkward as when we tried to ask Aziraphale and Crowley how long they’d been married,” Wensleydale said, and Brian snorts.

Warlock frowns, sitting down on his bed. “Who?”

Aziraphale was almost as weird a name as Ashtoreth. Or Thaddeus. Hell, or Warlock. Maybe he shouldn’t speak on the subject of weird names. 

The four glance at each other. 

“Well-” Wensleydale started-

“I thought you knew-” Adam began-

“Friends of the family,” Pepper said, cutting them both off. “C’mon, guys, we have to go. Talk about... stuff.” 

They departed for another section of the hallway, where Warlock could hear them talking in hushed voices. _Well, that was a thing. Another one to add to my list._ It made sense, really, that his roommate would be that odd. Weird things just... happened around him. He’d been kidnapped, had a satanist nanny, a gun had turned into a water pistol in his hands, and that wasn’t even accounting for that disaster with the crocodile when he was twelve and the mysterious cheque from an unknown person he’d got every year since his mess of a birthday party signed ‘from your guardian angel and demon’.

He picked up his iPod and fiddled with it. The screen flickered to life.

_I said hey_

_You can’t write it_

_The most peculiar day of your life  
_

No kidding. Warlock threw it back across the room, where it kept playing. 

_Of your life, of your life...  
_

\----

He didn’t like to admit it, but he didn’t have many... friends. The only kids he knew were shoved with him by their parents while they talked about important politic things. He hadn’t made the list for the birthday party- his mom had done that, picking out who she wanted to impress. _That_ had backfired. Should’ve just done an escape room like he’d said.

Sure, he had a social life at college, now. But that was a new cast of people every time, and he barely remembered anyone’s names. The closest thing he had to a friend was Adam and them, and they were... well. Adam had this off-putting intensity to him, that always made Warlock feel disorientated after a conversation. He pronounced everything like it was the total and absolute truth, even when it obviously wasn’t. It reminded him of a couple of his more occult encounters.

Or maybe he was just a mess around cute boys. 50/50 chance, really.

They were at a bar now, sitting next to Adam and Pepper.

“Lock- War- ugh, how am I supposed to give you a nickname?” Adam said, tapping a rhythm on his glass.

“Maybe don’t do War,” Pepper suggested. “We should start a terrible names club.”

“My name is fine,” Adam said, sounding a bit confused.

“Not you. Him.”

Warlock frowned. “Pepper isn’t weird.”

Adam grinned. “She doesn’t usually tell people. We made fun of it in kindergarten and she beat us up and then went by Pepper for the rest of her life.”

Pepper groaned, dropping her head into her hands. “You would to, if your parents named you _Pippin Galadriel Moonchild.”  
_

“Wait, really?” 

Pepper looked dangerously close to regressing back to her kindergarten days. “One more word, Warlock, and-”

“Okay, okay!” He raised his hands. “I’ve been there, alright? Rich white parents are the worst.”

_“Yeah.”_

“Oh, and Satanist nuns. Fuck Satanist nuns.”

Pepper swallowed her drink and stared at Warlock. “Fuck what now?”

“They’re not that bad,” Adam said nonchalantly. “I mean, my name turned out alright, and I was born in the same hospital as you.”

Warlock did a double-take. Something _had_ seemed familiar about Adam- but who just knows that stuff? Had their parents known each other or something?

“How do you _remember_ that?” 

Adam grinned wickedly. “I remember a lot of things, Warlock Dowling. And I know _everything_ about you.” 

He held that expression for about a minute before breaking out laughing. “Kidding! My godfather told me!”

That raised a whole new slew of questions, but Warlock ignored them for now. He clanged his glass on Pepper’s. “To our new club, then?” 

Pepper laughed and knocked back the rest of her drink.

Maybe what he’d said about having no friends wasn’t exactly true. He could try this. 

\----

“Bye ‘Lock!” Adam called.

Warlock poked his head up from his mess of blankets. “I swear, I’m going to kill you if-”

“If I have an 8 am class, you have to suffer too. See you!” He breezed out the door, leaving Warlock to mutter the curses he learned from Nanny Ashtoreth (and a couple he made up on the spot that he thought perfectly described Adam right now). 

He flopped over to see Adam’s phone lying on his bed, screen still on.

_What the hell... maybe I’ll change his lockscreen to something cursed to get back at him..._

Then the phone beeped. Warlock twisted to grab it and see who it was. Someone named... Crowley? He swiped the screen and opened into a group chat.

 **adam:** fucking end me i hate everything why’d i sign up for this class

 **aziraphale:** My dear boy, it can’t be that bad!

 **adam:** my only respite from this terrible life is annoying warlock

 **crowley:** your own fault

 **crowley:** how is he, anyway? parents treating him alright?

Warlock bit his lip. It was same as usual, really. They pretended he didn’t exist except when trying to use him for some political agenda or to show off to friends, and he did whatever he liked and ignored them. But why did this Crowley person care, anyway? They’d never met before, as far as he knew.

 **adam:** who the fuck are you -warlock

_Read 8:02 am_

“Ugh!” Warlock yelled and threw the phone back across the room. Immediately after that, it started to ring. 

_We don't know what's good for us  
'Cause if we did, we might not do it_

Warlock hadn’t known Adam liked Bastille. Whatever. He dragged himself up and accepted the call- from Crowley.

“Hey kid,” said a weirdly familiar voice. 

“I’m eighteen.”

“Eh. So, um, this is... y’know... uh...”

“Where do I know you from!” Warlock snapped.

“Well...” Crowley said, “Aziraphale taught you about Christianity, right?”

“Who the fuck is A- Azih- Aasfsd-” Warlock waved his hand vaguely. “ _Them._ The person you’re talking about. _”_

“Shit, uh... I mean, Mr. Fell. Your tutor?” 

“Yeeeah? Why do you know so much about me? And why do you sound so familiar?”

“You heard of an Antichrist, kid?”

Warlock vaguely remembered his Nanny pointing to some pictures in a book, all tinted red. “Armageddon. And see here? That’s the Antichrist- you. Someday, you’re going to cause it. Seas boiling and everything...”

“But I don’t want to make it happen,” Warlock had complained. “I like the world.”

His Nanny had smiled slightly. “You don’t want to make it end in a rain of blood?”

“No!”

“Alright. I like the world too.”

Here and now, Warlock frowned at Adam’s phone. 

“Am... am I the Antichrist?” 

“No. That’s Adam. Your roommate.”

_What?_

But Crowley continued without even giving Warlock a chance to process it. 

“We thought you were, though. We took care of you for eleven years, trying to make sure you wouldn’t cause Armageddon. But in the end Adam and his friends stopped it with no influences.” 

The feeling he knew Crowley from somewhere grew stronger. Could it be...

“Ms. Ashtoreth?” 

“Thought you’d never get it, kid. You can call me Anthony Crowley now, though. That’s my preferred name.”

“And Mr. Fell- and he was Brother Francis, I think- his real name is Azi... what you said?”

“Yep. Demon and angel.” 

_What now?_

“But you don’t have wings?” Warlock asked, with no idea why he latched onto that fact as proof they couldn’t be.

“We do, just invisible.”

“Or horns and a tail, or a halo, or weird eyes-” Then he realized. “You wore those sunglasses... do you have no eyes, or something?”

“Close. They’re snake eyes. Slits and everything. No eyes would be a bit too creepy, you know?”

Warlock didn’t feel like he knew anything, at the moment. Though all this made sense, in a weird kind of way. 

“You sent the money every year, didn’t you?” he asked.

“Guilty,” Crowley said. “Me and Aziraphale.”

“And the time I got kidnapped to the Middle East or whatever...?”

“They were supposed to kidnap Adam.” 

Adam _did_ have a dog, named Dog, who he talked about all the time. He could have had him when he was eleven. And apparently he heard voices? That was kind of cool.

“What about the crocodile?”

Crowley blinked. “What now?” 

“Nevermind.” 

Warlock pulled down the cereal box. If he was up at this ungodly - heh- hour anyway, might as well have breakfast. 

_What should I say to him? I don’t normally have much tact in the best situations, and this is... weird.  
_

“Thanks,” he blurted.

Crowley sputtered. “What for?” 

“For taking care of me. And, um, stuff. I don’t know if I would have turned out okay without you, parents being how they were and all.”

The demon seemed to be at a loss for words. “I.. well... no problem, I guess?”

Then he hung up. 

Warlock stared into the bowl of cereal, trying to process what had just happened. By the time he thought he had a handle on what was going on, he’d missed all his morning classes.

But that was alright.

\----

Warlock stepped nervously inside the little cottage. The outside had been a neat, beautiful garden- the inside seemed to be mostly _book,_ all scattered around with shelves reaching up to the ceiling.

“Come on,” Pepper said, rolling her eyes. “It’s not like there’s a barrier outside the door or something.” 

“Maybe there is. Maybe I’m stuck. Standing in the doorway forever...” 

Brian grabbed his arm and pulled him through. “There. Saved you.”

“You have my eternal thanks.” 

“Actually,” Wensleydale said, “If there was really a barrier there, you’d be stuck in there too.”

“My savior bows to no physics,” Warlock said. 

_“Dog!”_ Adam yelled as an old, grey-haired terrier jumped up on him, attempting to lick his face. Adam pushed him back and affectionately scratched the top of his head. “Who’s a good boy? You are! You’re such a good boy!” 

Warlock was more of a cat person, honestly, so he forayed further in, leaving them to fawn over the dog. 

An angel was baking, while a demon sat on the kitchen counter, kicking his legs. He grinned when Warlock walked in and jumped down. 

Before Warlock quite knew what was happening, he was wrapped in a hug. _Oh, there are wings,_ he realized, feeling invisible feathers brush his back. 

Crowley extracted himself and placed a hand on Warlock’s shoulder. “Hi kid. Smite anything recently?”

Warlock laughed. “Just Adam in Smash.”

“Hey!” Adam yelled, walking into the kitchen with Dog still yapping at his heels. 

“It’s true!” 

Aziraphale turned around from what he was doing. “Ah, Warlock, my dear boy! And Adam! Would you five like some biscuits?”

“Sure, Mr. Fell?” Warlock stammered. 

“Still can’t pronounce it?“

“I can! It’s just I knew you as that first.”

“He can’t pronounce it,” Pepper said.

“Traitor.” 

Warlock was feeling more _okay_ than he had felt in months- in years, actually, ever since his eleventh birthday.

You never forget the first friends you make, he decided.

**Author's Note:**

> the end! was planning to get greasy johnson in there but it never happened :(  
> eh, whatever
> 
> song references- the title is from icarus by bastille, this fanfic's assigned themesong, as is these lines in the car- You’re putting up your armor when you leave.../You leave because you’re certain of who you want to be/Icarus is flying too close to the sun/And Icarus’ life/ Has only just begun, it's just begun
> 
> I said hey/You can’t write it/The most peculiar day of your life is The Most Peculiar Day of Your Life, by the Hoosiers. It's unsure how Warlock would relate to the rest, being a rich white kid, but those lines at least fit.
> 
> We don't know what's good for us/'Cause if we did, we might not do it is Grip by Bastille and Seeb, and Adam has that ringtone for the sole reason of teasing Crowley. 
> 
> hope you all like this unbetad mess and please leave a comment!


End file.
